Multiculturalism is a reality, but normative multiculturalism, a relativistic and collectivist approach to how different cultures should live together, is wrong and dangerous. A free society must stand on the rights of the individual and on a minimum of shared values.

Read: 30 pages, then skimmed the rest

Recommended: Only if you don’t already agree with the above summary. I didn’t find their mostly theoretical approach interesting.

They weren’t very bright, the anarchists, were they? I get the impression that their criteria for a plausible social theory was that it could convince their buddies down at the pub. Fighting for individualism by teaming up with its greatest enemies was also not a proud moment in political strategy. But their hearts were in the right place. Except when they were killing people, I mean. Posterity can be unforgiving that way.

Recommended: Weakly.

William H. Davidow – Overconnected – The Promise and Threat of the Internet (2011)

The kind of book where every chapters opens with an anecdote, and everything is tied together in a single idea. Rule of thumb: When you have an idea that can be captured completely in a word plus a subtitle, don’t write a book, but a tweet.

The Conquest of Everest (1953, UK, Lowe)

A new queen for Britain, and the top of Mount Everest, all in one day. Top of the world, ma! Top of the world. This documentary presents Edmund Hillary’s conquest of Everest as the supreme human achievement of his age, a small-scale moonlanding. The climbers are gentlemen heroes, whose conquest of nature depends equal parts on science and stiff upper lips. Watched it all.

From Here to Eternity (1953, USA)

America’s pre-war soldiers lounge about at Pearl Harbor and OMG they’ll all be bombed in the end! Watched it all before, but mostly out of respect for its Oscars, and I don’t see the point this time either. Might be better if it had a Moroder soundtrack.

Fort Ti (1953, USA)

50s 3D sometimes offers the viewer something vaguely 3D’ish, (if you focus .. just .. right), but more often just a blur and a nagging sense that you’re supposed to be seeing something here. And you get just as nauseus whether it works or not. Watched: 7 minutes.

Introduced by a brimstone preacher whose background history of the world starts with Genesis and ends with Israel’s descent into idolatry at the hands of that .. that .. that woman Jezebel, I propose this as a candidate for the worst Bible epic of all time. Watched: 10 minutes.

Amal Aden – Det skal merkes at de gråter (2011)

There are two ways to be a feminist now: One is to put on a mock-angry expression and repeat the old slogans about hidden power structures and average salary differences, and oh dear what does it really mean to be a feminist these days anyway?, to bored applause from those who remember the glory days. The other is to stick your nose into questions of violence, rape, mutilation and general douchebaggery in minority cultures, where earlier generations have prepared no answers for you, and where independent thought may have you accused of being, or actually becoming, prejudiced. And noone will thank you, least of all the women you’re concerned about. But their daughters might.

“Though he’d fart like a sailor and stamp on elves when he saw them – and only he did – you couldn’t help but respect the man.”

Recommended: “Stumbling after the lost and damned, a buccaneer to nowhere in deserts of uniform? Alone with the skeleton of a sandwich and his deal with dread?”

Guy Sorman – The Empire of Lies (2006)

Sorman talks to Chinese dissidents to show that, however breathtaking New China may be, it is still a dictatorship. The Party has all power, and uses it to serve its own interests. The Communists have rediscovered love of money, but they have no time for human dignity and honesty. The China they’re building is a morally stunted China, a shadow of its potential.

How dry can you make slapstick comedy before it’s not even funny any more? Jacques Tati balances the edge, like an android experimenting with “this thing you humans call comedy”. Watched it all.

Titanic (1953, USA, Negulesco)

So the appeal of Titanic movies is, what, that you know it will Sink Tragically in the end, so you’re willing to put up with unremarkable drama while you wait? Ending a story with “but suddenly there was a disaster and almost everyone died” is usually seen as a cheat. Titanic movies get a free pass from that. I object! Watched: 5 minutes.

Project Moonbase (1953, USA)

I believe I detect the Heinleinian touches here both in the revelation that future America has a female president, and in the scene where the general threatens to give the female colonel a spanking if she doesn’t stop sulking and obey his orders. He was a funny old man that way. Watched it all – with MST3K commentary.

The Clown (1953, USA)

Crusty the Clown is all washed up. He drinks, gets into fights, and it’s only thanks to his young friend Bart that he eventually lands a job in television. Watched: 12 minutes.

The French media and intelligentsia have an annual petition ritual. It’s the fashionable thing for Paris’s literati to sign a text condemning the death penalty – in the United States. However abhorrent the practice may be, the fact is that the death sentence is not given frequently in America. It exists because of a democratic consensus and an independent judiciary. I, too, belong to the band of signatories. Over the years, I have tried hard to get the text to condemn China as well. So far, I have been unsuccessful.

Why China? they ask me. Perhaps all those who are shot down and dismembered really were guilty, they think; capital punishment, unacceptable in the United States, might be good for the Chinese; the death sentence could act as a deterrent to stem China’s widespread violence. Does this mean that the Chinese government is legitimate in killing its subjects, whereas the Americans are not? Are we suggesting that a Chinese life is not worth an American life and that human rights do not apply to the yellow race? That is not the real issue, say some. We would do better to respect the cultural characteristics of the Chinese than to impose our ideas on them – even though the Chinese constitution does refer to human rights now. Between the sinophiles on the one hand and the America-bashers on the other, good sense has been throw to the winds.

In 2005, Chinese banks began a series of reforms to bring their practices gradually into line with Western standards. .. The question is whether Chinese banks are reformable. The subject may appear technical, but it lies at the heart of the Communist system.

The central government needs better-managed banks that can finance rational activities, because if the banks went bankrupt and the investors lost their money, the Party would collapse. But if banks functioned rationally, they would no longer be at the beck and call of the local Party bosses to whom no bank can currently refuse a loan. The loans prop up unproductive local firms that provide jobs and perks. Without the loans, the cadres would lose their influence and public-sector jobs would dry up. Students would suffer, too: banks would stop giving them loans, knowing that they would never return the money. As things stand, they dare not ask these future cadres to honor their debts. Reforming the banking system is thus fraught with danger. There could be a student revolt, thousands of loss-making enterprises could close down, and the local bosses could become toothless.

How will the Party reconcile these conflicting pulls and pressures? Will it be able to avoid bankruptcy by adopting more rational policies, and at the same time guarantee social stability by maintaining the local chiefs’ power to grant loans? Who will be hit first: local cadres, students, the new unemployed, or the financial system? Chinese leaders and foreign investors keep their fingers crossed.